


Touch

by joannereads



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Bottom Danny "Danno" Williams, Fluff, M/M, Top Steve McGarrett, friends are lovers, sex is less explicit than i normally write, zero angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25709809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joannereads/pseuds/joannereads
Summary: Five times Danny and Steve are seen touching each other, and one time they’re really glad they aren't.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 34
Kudos: 232





	Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of fluffy fun built around Steve, Danny and their Season 10 Ohana.

  1. **December - Junior**



Christmas is a tough time of year for both Steve and Danny, so Junior is determined to make this one pretty great. He’s arranged to see his own family on the 26th, Tani is bringing her brother, Chin and Abby have agreed to stop by as they’re heading over to see family for the first time in three years – and Danny and Steve are family.

Junior knows that he can’t bring back Joe or Doris or Matt, or any of the other ghosts that haunt the two men he lives with (well, part time, when he’s not at Tani’s). Instead, he’s going to try and remind the guys what they do have and it’s not easy. Trying to get Mary and Joan over had been really difficult, but he’s finally managed a little surprise and he’s going to move out for a few days so that she can stay with them.

So, when Christmas Day arrives and he can’t find either Steve or Danny, Junior starts to panic. All his carefully laid plans are going to fall apart if they aren’t even _at home._ He doesn’t want to alarm them if he does find them, but a quick search through the house and garage only leaves the garden and beach beyond. Junior strides purposefully towards the large glass doors that open into the back yard, but stop suddenly when he sees them.

Standing just a few yards back from where the ocean laps gently at their strip of sand, Steve and Danny stand like reflections facing out towards the horizon. They don’t seem to be talking and somehow Junior knows that he shouldn’t go out there right now. Or any time soon. But he also can’t tear his eyes away from them.

Steve stands with his left hand in his pocket, but the fingers of his right hand are twined through the fingers on Danny’s left hand. Danny, who always talks with his hands, is motionless in the hold. Junior watches and he realises that Danny’s shoulders shake slightly, as though barely supressing tears. Junior watches as Steve turns slowly and draws Danny into his embrace, watches as Steve’s free hand strokes over the side of Danny’s face, down over his shoulder and down the plains of his back, until his hand is nestled in the curve of Danny’s lower back. Danny presses his face into Steve’s shoulder, breathes deeply, and Junior knows he should turn away.

Sure, he’s suspected something is going on with his bosses. They’ve been sharing a bed for months, but they never show anything beyond the casual flirting and bickering that they had always shown. Junior and Tani have reflected that maybe that’s because this _thing_ they have has been going on for much longer, before either of them were in the picture, but a few carefully placed questions of Lou seemed to disprove the theory altogether.

Now, Junior watches as Danny looks up at Steve, who uses his thumbs to dry Danny’s cheeks, and then watches a little more as Danny repeats the action for Steve. Junior hadn’t realised that Steve had been crying as well. Each gentle touch seems to soothe the other, and Junior winces at the quietude they give each other and how he, really, in invading that privacy entirely.

Panicked now, Junior hurries away from the window and lurches upstairs to clear away some things ready for Mary’s visit. All the while, he can’t shake the image of the tenderness, the care, the honesty of what he’d seen outside. He wants that, he realises as he stuffs underwear into a bag, and whether that’s with Tani or someone else he doesn’t know yet, but he definitely wants that.

  1. **February – Lou**



So Danny managed to get shot again, and Steve really isn’t handling it at all well. Lou recognises the blame in Steve’s eyes for what it is: Steve always blames himself if Danny gets hurt even though there was no way he could have prevented this one. For a start, Steve wasn’t even at the location when the shooting started.

Ah. Maybe that’s the problem.

Lou shuffles over to where Steve is tearing into an HPD officer who had been tasked to support the team. He interrupts, apologises with a look, and steers Steve towards his own truck: the enormous shiny Silverado had been an endless source of ribbing for a while because it seemed so out of place with Steve’s personality. However, just as he’s about to send Steve on his way, he notices the shaking, and his heart suddenly feels a little heavy. Battle worn, he guesses. He recognises the pain and the fear in Steve’s face and feels himself pitying him more that he probably needs to.

Steve’s hands tremble, his face is pale and his lips form a white line across his face. He’s been looking a little thinner, lately, a little more tired, and this is not the Steve Lou knows so well. This is Steve in panic-mode, fighting against his military-trained instincts to go and shoot something, as well as fighting his body’s own failings as age and a dangerous life have begun to catch up with him. Lou’s not stupid – he feels the same way every damn day and he hasn’t been held hostage by terrorists (repeatedly) or trapped in blown up buildings.

He takes Steve’s keys and it says a lot for his mental state that he doesn’t argue, instead shuffling into the passenger seat and closing the door. Lou drives carefully, up to Tripler this time (for a change as they’ve been at King’s more frequently recently – and what that says about this job and this team isn’t worth thinking about right now). When they arrive, he leaves the truck right out front and doesn’t care. They should have their own parking space by now, after the last decade of this shit. Steve is climbing out of the truck when his cell rings. He glances at the caller ID and his face falls further, tears threatening to spill over, but he answers anyway.

Grace.

Steve explains in hushed, calm tones (and how the hell he’s managing to do that while he cries silently is anyone’s guess, but Lou knows he couldn’t have done the same) and reassures Grace that Danno had been okay when he left in the ambulance, that he’d been conscious and complaining.

And it’s half true. He was complaining until he passed out as the doors were closing. Steve wanted to go in the ambulance but Lou knows he wouldn’t have kept out of the way, and he promised to get him there instead, told him to give the team time to work. At least that was a promise he could keep and did keep. Steve settles the call and then strokes a finger across Grace’s picture before it flashes off the screen. A quick moment, a reflection of sorts, but it’s over so quickly that Lou begins to think he imagined it.

They stride through the halls, and the number of familiar faces is terrifying really. When they reach Danny’s room, it’s clear he’s not out of the woods yet. Tubes twist out of his arm, out of his chest where the bullet had entered, and Lou tries not to notice that it’s almost exactly where he got shot when they were in quarantine. The monitors all read stable—and there’s a new and exciting skill he never thought he’d learn when he joined the task force—and he finds he can breathe a little easier.

Steve sits silently next to the bed and slowly, painfully falls apart. It starts with the silent tears again, but escalates into body shuddering sobs that look agonising in their intensity. Lou knows this isn’t the time to offer comfort, because Steve will shut down and this whole sharing-his-emotions thing is still relatively new. And healthy. And about goddamn time. So Lou closes the door quietly behind him, but watches through the reinforced glass just in case he is needed.

Time passes slowly as Steve crumbles. Danny sleeps on, whether medically induced or just recovery, Lou still isn’t sure. Eventually, Steve runs dry. He swipes at his face with shaking hands, and then stands. Lou watches as Steve bends over, grasping Danny’s hand in his own, and brushing Danny’s hair back from his forehead gently. Then he leans forward, presses a gentle kiss to the recently exposed skin, and then again into the hair. As Steve bends down and begins to whisper into Danny’s ear, Lou realises that Steve is going to be okay, and he turns away, heading off to find a doctor and coffee, not necessarily in that order.

He’s not stupid. Steve and Danny are close, as close as two people can get Lou thinks, flashing back to his own wife and the love they share. But he’s also not going to invade or poke his nose in to where it doesn’t belong. Smiling wryly at the knowledge that had Tani been in his shoes right now, she would very much still be looking through that door, Lou pushes through a set of double doors and leaves the men to their business. After all, it isn’t any of his.

  1. **May – Adam**



The weather is perfect, with just enough trade wind blowing through to stop the sun from being unbearable without the need for a jacket. The food is great too: Kamekona’s outdone himself. The company though, that’s the best thing of all. Adam is endlessly grateful for each and every chance Steve and the team have given him, and sitting here as part of the Ohana is the best feeling in the world.

He’s not a hundred percent sure why they’re having this little get together, but thinks its maybe just Steve’s and Danny’s way of saying job well done after a hellish couple of weeks chasing child traffickers across the island chain. Maybe it’s also a way for them to remind themselves that everyone is safe and well.

Eddie sits at Steve’s feet. He and Danny are side by side in matching chairs, matching beers in hand and matching grins on their faces as Tani recounts another embarrassing Junior-adapts-to-civilian-life story from their adventures together. Occasionally, Danny will look at Steve with his eyebrows raised and Steve will laugh, or Steve will look over at Danny who will shake his head forlornly, but still grinning.

Adam thinks that, somehow without talking, they are remembering Steve’s own difficulties transitioning. Adam heard some of those stories from Kono, and it makes him wistful and sad so he shakes the thought away as quickly as he can. Adam knows he and Kono never had what Steve and Danny do—the ability to communicate without words—not to this extent anyway. He can’t help but stare as the silent conversation continues, until he realises that Danny has his leg pressed tight up against Steve’s. That’s, well, not new exactly, but rather public for these two.

Kono had once told him that she was certain that Steve and Danny were sleeping together, but she had no proof. She had tried to get it and failed, a matter of consternation for her, but Adam knows why she thought it. He’s been around them the longest, since Kono and Chin both moved on to new Ohana elsewhere, but he can’t remember a time the two didn’t bicker, argue, tease and touch. Always with the touching.

Everyone drifts away to other parts of the beach, and Adam finds himself talking with Lou and Renee when he turns back to the lanai. He sees them then—Steve and Danny—talking with heads bowed low and fingers laced together. It’s intimate, personal, and Adam wants to look away, but he also feels like Kono would never forgive him if he didn’t get the proof she always wanted. Steve sits back a little, then runs his thumb across Danny’s lower lip like one might do before leaning in to a kiss, but that never happens. Danny looks up a little, into Steve’s eyes, and then he smiles. It’s blinding, and Adam watches as Steve seems to almost bask in it. Then they drift back into their own space, as much as they ever let each other have their space, and Adam tears his gaze back to Lou and his beautiful wife. Lou’s gaze is knowing though, and Adam blushes a little before swallowing back a mouthful of beer.

  1. **June – Mamo**



Stevie hasn’t been around for a while, but when he turns up with the little blonde cop, Mamo can’t help but grin. Steve says that he and Danny want to paddle board out a ways to the little cove but need some kit. Mamo gives them what they want and waves them off, thinking nothing of it and just glad to see Steve smiling.

As the day passes, his thoughts drift back to Steve and Danny more than he would have expected. Steve was happy today, deeply happy, in a soul-deep sort of a way that Mamo doesn’t see often, and doesn’t think he remembers ever seeing Steve. Danny he doesn’t know so well, but the way he was watching Steve keeps flashing into Mamo’s mind’s eye. He can’t shake it, but thinks he must be imagining things because of his own happiness at the visit. His day continues, haunted in a pleasing way by the visit and the questions it has raised after all this time.

The sun is starting to set, and he’s closing up for the day, when the two men make their way back up on to the beach with Mamo’s borrowed gear. They’re laughing, and Danny’s sun-soaked and pinked skin is almost glowing under Steve’s touch. And there’s lots of that. As they talk, their equipment and bags forgotten at their feet, Steve’s fingers stroke up Danny’s arms, brush across his cheek or push hair back from his face, trail down Danny’s spine, curve around his neck. Mamo’s gaze is drawn back to Steve, and the soul-deep happiness is definitely something more than he had credited before. He wants to call it love, but he’s not sure that the word is big enough for what he sees. He glance back to Danny, who is pressing his face into the palm Steve has cupped around his cheek, and then Danny laughs and the spell is seemingly broken.

Maybe magic is the word Mamo is looking for? Maybe the invisible threads that seem to weave the two men together are more about magic than love? Mamo smiles at the thought and then turns away, leaving them to their touches and smiles and magic.

  1. **July – Tani**



Months! It’s been going on months. Little looks, gentle touches, teasing bickering and provoking, but Junior has finally agreed that their relationship is something more than just work related, and is finally moving in. (He has more stuff at her house than Steve’s, and she can’t believe how long he’s been in denial, but she also finds it super cute.)

Tani’s also pretty certain that Steve and Danny will be glad to have the house to themselves in a more predictable way. Today, for example, they’re helping Junior sort through his things and packing them in Steve’s truck, which he’s let them borrow to make the move easier. Every now and then, Danny turns to Steve with an old knick-knack and waves it around, demanding to know if he really needs it any longer.

Each time, she watches Steve shuffle over, handle the object reverently, and explain in hushed tones what the meaning is. Most times, Danny shakes his head and calls Steve ‘goof’ or ‘marshmallow’, but the items have gone back where they came from. At first, Tani thinks Danny is trying to make way for more of his own things, because he certainly isn’t moving any of Junior’s, but over the last hour her opinion changes.

As the afternoon wears on, the stories have become quieter, more personal. The space between the men decreases, the time they spend sharing the object increases, and the time they spend helping becomes non-existent. But Tani can’t bring herself to care, because what she’s seeing is beautifully tender and intimate, and she’s not going to do a damn thing to change that.

Junior nudges her but she gestures at him to be silent. They finish loading the truck and, just before they head out, Tani realises that she’s left her jacket upstairs. She darts back in, leaps up the steps and grabs up the jacket, before turning back for the stairs. She stops, startled slightly, as her eye is caught by what she sees. She doesn’t want to watch, because she knows they don’t realise she’s there, though she made plenty of noise hurtling up the wooden stair case (so it’s not her fault, is it?).

Danny is holding a photograph, and Steve is nestled in behind him, their bodies pressed up against each other. Steve’s chin rests on Danny’s shoulder and he’s pointing things out in the image with one hand, while the other is curled around Danny’s hip possessively. It’s strikingly different, though Tani has heard stories from the others over the last few months about Steve and Danny seemingly becoming more publically intimate, though the two men have said nothing to anyone about whether there is something more to their relationship than just ‘best of friends’. Now, she watches as Steve smiles wistfully at the story he whispers into Danny’s ear, and watches how Danny presses back just a little so that Steve can feel him more fully present. Danny asks a question, points at something, and that’s when Steve seems to see her on the stairs. She moves immediately, but the odd thing is that they don’t. Not at all. Steve wishes her luck unpacking, tells them there’ll be beer and steaks ready for them at seven so they don’t have to cook, and to have a good afternoon. All from Danny’s shoulder where his chin still rests.

Tani darts out the door with a nervous and slightly embarrassed wave and then can’t help but giggle stupidly all the way to her house.

Junior tells her she’s exaggerating, but she keeps the private moment tucked away inside her. She knew they loved each other, that Steve and Danny revolved around each other in a way most people will never be lucky enough to experience. She knows much of that is born from mutual tragedy, from loss and heartbreak, but there’s also something base and physical she’s seen over the few years they’ve worked together and she’s been in Steve’s home. Their little touches aren’t reminders, they’re reassurances, and their bickering isn’t a habit, it’s reassuring; some things which never change for them because everything else changes constantly. It’s deeper than love, Tani things, and way better than the co-dependency she had previously named it. She envies the connection and is grateful they have it in overwhelmingly equal measures.

** +1. July - Danny and Steve **

“Bed?” Steve asks from where he is leaning against the kitchen doorframe.

“Yes, in a second, just finishing up.” Danny dries the last couple of plates and puts them back in the cupboard. He glances around and decides the kitchen is plenty tidy enough for tonight. He heads towards where Steve still waits for him, and then leans forward to place a soft kiss on Steve’s lips as he turns out the kitchen light.

Steve hums softly. “What was that for?”

“I love you,” Danny says simply, pushing Steve back a little and then twisting their fingers together as they head for the stairs.

“I love you too,” Steve finally adds, after punching in the alarm code. They stumble upstairs, neither wanting to let go of the other, if only for the quiet reassurance of it. They step into their bedroom, freshly painted in a soft, pale yellow that freshens the place and goes better with the bedding Danny had bought when they finally moved in proper. He still has his house—the lease isn’t up yet—but he needed somewhere to store furniture until they could figure out a way to move Junior on anyway. Danny had told Steve that they wouldn’t have to wait too long, but it seems Junior was almost as stubborn as Steve when it came to noticing what was right in front of his eyes. However, it only took him a few years rather than the almost decade Steve seemed to need.

“What are you thinking about?” Steve asks. He sits on the edge of the bed and draws Danny into the space between his legs, planting his hands on Danny’s hips and rubbing little circles with his thumbs.

“That I’m glad you figured out you loved me before I died of old age, or a bullet, whichever came first,” Danny says, but the smile is enough to relax Steve’s age-old fears of letting Danny down.

“I’m glad too,” he replies. He lifts Danny’s t shirt a little and presses soft kisses to Danny’s stomach, over the fading scar, before dipping his tongue into Danny’s belly button. Danny gasps, moans lightly and then lifts the shirt off completely. Steve looks up at him, grinning widely.

“Yeah, yeah,” Danny laughs, “I’m easy, I know.” Danny often replays their first few weeks together when he needs reminding that this is a good thing. Steve had propositioned him almost everywhere—including the office, the car, the yard, the bar and a few other places Danny is embarrassed to admit even now—and Danny had gone willingly every time.

He can’t explain it to himself, let alone anyone who might be brave enough to ask, but the feel of Steve’s hands on his skin is like some form of drug. He _needs_ it to stay sane, and when he goes back to New Jersey or a case pulls them out of each other’s orbit, he feels himself fraying at the edges.

Steve knows this vividly because some of the best sex they have had has been after these absences. Today, though, they have been surrounded by each other completely, and so there is no edge to take off. They can take their time to touch and love and have. Danny dips down and presses a gentle kiss to Steve’s forehead, while Steve slides feather-light fingers up Danny’s chest. It hovers over the latest scar, the one from the bullet back in February. It’s not angry and red anymore, rather just another mark in the journey of Danny’s life. Steve still feels guilty that he wasn’t there and will always feel that way, no matter what Danny says. He traces the outline of the scar, and the one almost exactly next to it but more faded, and Danny shivers.

They tumble into bed together and Steve slowly takes Danny apart – inch by inch. He strokes over the delicate skin of Danny’s ankle bones, pressing kisses into the flesh after his fingers have traced over the veins and pressed on up into the muscle. He kisses each and every one of Danny’s finger tips, before sucking one finger into his mouth and making silent promises for later. Those fingers then trace back down over Danny’s ribs, marking out more scars from rebar and knives and prison stays—Danny’s journey hasn’t been easy but then neither has Steve’s. But it brought them here, to this place and this moment and each other. Steve’s is grateful even though he doesn’t want to be.

Gently, Steve’s fingers press through the muscles in Danny’s thighs, and he places hot, wet kisses in their wake, before finally rubbing across Danny’s perineum, pressing and massaging and teasing. Danny’s moans ratchet up a notch and Steve grins into the hot skin of Danny’s hip before finally, ever so slowly, sucking the head of Danny’s cock into this mouth.

Just as his fingers have worshipped Danny’s skin, so his tongue does Danny’s cock. He is so engrossed in his task, so enjoying giving rather than receiving the pleasure, that it takes him long moments to feel Danny’s desperate tugging at his hair.

“No, with you inside me,” Danny gasps when he finally gets Steve’s attention. “I need to feel you tonight.”

In this, Steve also takes his time, preparing Danny slowly out of a deep seated desire to never hurt the man beneath him again. When he finally enters him, it’s like coming home and all he feels is the way that he loves Danny and Danny loves him. Their skin presses together, Steve's thrusts short and slow so they can stay entangled with each other. They trade open mouthed kisses, and Steve’s hands never still as they roam over every inch of skin they can reach, finally settling at the point they are most intimately joined and tracing their connection oh so very gently.

Danny gasps into Steve’s mouth at the sensation, and thrusts more purposefully, his cock rubbing deliciously against Steve’s abs. When they make love like this, Steve thinks, it’s the most intimate experience he’s ever had or could ever imagine, and he never wants it to end. He fights his orgasm with every fibre of his being, desperate to stay like this with his Danno forever. And while he knows it’s not possible, he tries anyway, until finally Danny breaks first and the sensation of Danny’s orgasm striping across his own skin tips Steve into oblivion.

Sometime later, as they lay tangled together in their post-orgasm and post-showered state, Danny begins to laugh.

“What?” Steve asks.

“Nothing, not really. It’s just, I’m beginning to wonder just how good the team we work with really are.”

“How so?” Steve prods, his fingers tracing lazy circles across Danny’s shoulder blades and up into his hairline, before tracing through the shaved sides that make Steve all hot and bothered most of the time.

“We’ve been at this for months and you, my Neanderthal man, are not subtle about it at all. Yet, they don’t seem to have noticed.”

“They know,” Steve says softly, “how could they not? Maybe they’re just not comfortable asking us?”

“I know we’ve talked, before, about coming out and just telling them that this is us, but maybe we really should?”  
“Why?” Steve asks, tracing the reverse path with his fingers.

And Danny doesn’t have an answer, because it shouldn’t matter if the others know.

“Grace then, and Charlie?” Danny asks.

“Grace knows,” Steve says again. Shocked, Danny lifts his head and stares into Steve’s beautiful blue eyes. Steve smiles. “She _did_ ask me, at Christmas. I didn’t tell her anything, because it was fairly new and you didn’t want to, but she just laughed and said something like she knew it and walked away.”

Danny places his cheek back against Steve’s chest and listens to the patter of his now nervous heartbeat.

“So just Charlie then,” he says softly as his eyes slip closed.

“Pretty sure he knows too,” Steve whispers with a smile.


End file.
